a cowardly lion
by Yatocat19
Summary: Lions are the kings of the jungle, they are the top of the food-chain, but the cowardly lions ended up caging themselves in a snare waiting for a pitiful death. Oc-insert, oc is a ghoul, is a One-shot


_**a cowardly lion**_

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Ghoul, I am not a rich manga author. Also this is on why would I own the series. Also ghouls eating humans is a thing. I tried my best at editing this but there will be mistakes so I'm sorry, I'm only human.**

 **A.N at the bottom, enjoy!**

 _Drip_

Drop

 _Drip_

Drop

Ichika doesn't remember much of her life of before, but she remembers the water. She could never forget the cool water around her skin. It surrounded her till her lungs gave out, and she died. She probably floated up to the top of the lake, and spooked somebody the next day with her corpse surprise.

She was woken up from her slumber in her new life when she was in her late toddler years. Those years were a blur of blood and confusion, Ichika can barely remember her mother or father shove down some type of food down her throat. And the puddles of blood would drip down like water causing a metallic smell.

Ichika gained more consciousness in that age was when she was left on the streets. She was almost five years old with a handful of yen in her hand. She actually doesn't know how she survived, but she finally started to be able to think and process what was around her.

The first time she had full control of her consciousness was when she was eating a corpse. It freaked her out a lot, but something her mind kept saying _this is normal why are you so disgusted._ She quickly found out normal food is bad, cannibalism is apparently good.

The first couple of months were pure hell. Since Ichika was grossed out by her diet, and didn't eat for a while. She was very weak for those days until someone had the mistake of bleeding in front of her. She pounced on the opportunity and killed the poor soul. After the few murders Ichika just sorta gave up on caring about the people she ate.

Her life wasn't super depressing, she tried to enjoy everything she had. Ichika tried to reverse some of the harm she had done to the area she was living in, and tried to help every wrong thing in the community. She would pick up trash and try to walk dogs. Small things like those, but people generally didn't trust the young homeless girl on the streets.

One of the things she especially liked to look at was the plants in the plant shops, her favorites were the cacti. She found them really cute, and wanted to horde them all. Which was pretty hard since it was hard to find them in shops. She ended up stealing a small one from the shop, Ichika thinks the owner knows but doesn't really care so much. She's happy that he doesn't because then she couldn't keep her new plant friend. She ended up naming him Francisco.

Francisco and Ichika were a funny pair since Ichika would try odd jobs so she could try to get more cacti friends **( I really want to write cactuses )** so that her lone buddy wouldn't be sad when she was gone. It was plain to see that Ichika went a little crazy from no friendly company.

The things about trying to get a job when you are some age around six is that adults get suspicious. Ichika learned this the hard way when she ended up getting questioned where her parents were at.

She ended up shrugging it off, but the next time she was caught near that area she was sent to an orphanage. Once they got there, and settled down for the night. Ichika tried sneaking off with Francisco, but was caught by another kid. She was almost out of the front door with Francisco in her hands, and a small amount of money in her bag. He almost made Ichika jump in fright.

He was a short kid who looked quite confused by Ichika and her cactus. His black hair and dirty appearance helped him hide in the night, unlike Ichika's which purple hair and green clothes seemed to lighten up in the darkness.

"You know he's not going to like you with that weird thing with you." The boy weirdly spoke out. He seemed afraid of something, but Ichika knew it was none of her business so she kept her voice silent.

He showed Ichika to her room that was shared with the other girls, and quickly left. Ichika knew if she didn't get out quickly she was going to be stuck here forever. She climbed into her small futon, and slept peacefully on a bed for the first time she could remember.

When Ichika woke up she got up to go to breakfast, and tried to not eat breakfast. She noticed the owner of the orphanage watching some of the children. She felt like there was something wrong with the man who ran the orphanage. He seemed too happy with his job, even though she had no reason to complain about someone else's sanity. He just felt gross to her, and he didn't smell like a nice meal.

Ichika quickly made her escape outside the tiny window in the bathroom when getting rid of the breakfast. She grabbed some of her leftover money in the bag, and Francisco. Ichika had to make her escape a lot faster since she made it out during the daylight. She tried to follow the way the car took her to the orphanage, but Ichika realized that the two of them were too exposed. So she just wandered around till she found a little area in the streets that looked good to her.

When Ichika was nine when she had around four cacti, she had to hide them from the elements so they wouldn't be overwatered. Over the years she found out more about the ghouls around the area. There were small ghoul run shops that would somewhat help unfortunate ghouls.

One of the smaller shops; a hair salon, would give free _goodie bags_ for ghouls as long as they got a haircut or bought some kind of soap. Getting a actual haircut felt super good to Ichika, she felt nice and clean for once in her new life.

Since she would always go to the hair salon to talk to the owner she ended up getting a job there. The owner was a nice older ghoul who seemed to enjoy the younger ghoul's company. After a few months Ichika ended up living in a small extra room the older ghoul had.

Ichika liked living there since she had a roof over her head, and she had away to get more plants. The old woman liked to joke around, and move the plants everyday. It got to a point where Ichika would walk into a room, and a least one cactus was moved into that room, which wasn't too hard since it was a small building.

The older ghoul had tried to teach Ichika how to do a good haircut, and how to dye hair perfectly, she also learned that Ichika was illiterate. It took awhile but after a year Ichika learned how to cut hair pretty good. For reading it took an extra year or two, but Ichika finally learned to read. She also taught Ichika the things her parents should have taught her, like blending in with the humans or more training in her kagune. Ichika was pretty terrible at pretending to eat human food.

When Ichika and the old hag had free time away from the salon the old hag would bury Ichika in learning new things. Ichika started calling the old ghoul old hag when she started the torture of homeschooling. They both learned that Ichika was quite smart for her age, and celebrated the academic success with a trip to a café.

When Ichika found out the only other thing that she might be able to eat was coffee, she was really disappointed and wished she could drink things like alcohol to drowned her sorrows. But when Ichika turned her head she saw the old hag downing the coffee like a shot of liquor. The old hag told her to stop being a pussy and drink her coffee or she would drink it all herself. The both of them laughed and drank coffee.

The next week when Ichika went shopping with her extra money from the salon. Instead of buying another cactus like she normally does she bought a small container of good smelling coffee beans. Since it was so expensive she only bought one.

When she got home, and showed the old hag her find, and they both quickly set up and make a cup of coffee from a old pot the old lady had sitting around. It was the most heavenly thing Ichika has ever tasted, making sense since she is such a sinful person who kills people for food.

When Ichika was fifteen when her older friend never returned from a hunting trip, so Ichika tried to keep the small shop running without its dead owner. She couldn't go and find who ever killed her friend since she knew the old hag would want her shop to stay open. She did a decent job with keeping business, even though she wasn't as good at cutting hair, but mainly because the old hag had left a will with some money behind for her. She also started to sell some of the plant babies that her plants have made.

Ichika sometimes gets people around her age in the shop, when they are there they are always gossiping about school. Ichika likes when they come the to salon, it makes her wish that she went to school. It also makes Ichika realize how bad at talking she is, only talking to customers, and the old lady, plus the whole childhood thing didn't really help.

In a month of working in the salon by herself, she realized that she had a lot less ghoul customers. Ichika had realized that she forgot about the _goodie bags_ , and quickly murdered somebody the next day. As soon as the smell of blood hit the shop she got some more unfortunate ghouls as customers .

When Ichika was sixteen she bought her own mask, instead of forever using a handy down from the old lady. She had to travel pretty far on the train to find a ghoul mask shop, but it was worth it for her. It cost her of half a month's pay though, she realized this a little too late.

Since Ichika was used to eating from the shadows it took awhile for her to get a name from her mask. Her name was Scissors from the way her mask was sorta shaped like it had been cut up. It had a bunch of cut on the dot lines on it. It wasn't really scary looking, but Ichika didn't care since it looked the way she wanted it. She thinks the first idea she had where the mask was just a giant scissor on her head would be a lot scarier, but to get that one made would have made her go into debt.

She was eighteen when a boy with beautiful black haired boy older then her walked into the salon. As soon as he walk inside Ichika could instantly smell the scent of blood on him. She quickly guided the only customer in the salon into one of the back rooms.

"Are you-"

"What do you want ?" Ichika quickly cut him off from speaking with a question of her own. She didn't have time for this nonsense since this was business hours, she was going to loses her customers. "Get lost, I got a business to run honey. If you want to talk, you got to met me at non-business hours."

She pushed him out of the salon, and told him to met her at the local café later that day. Then she got her loyal human customer out of her back room, and told a lie explaining the situation. Ichika continued doing the woman's hairdo, and gossiped with her.

"Oh, so he was an ex of one of your friends. That makes so much sense. One of my girlfriends had this man who…" Babbled the gossiper, Ichika was content with not listening anymore to the woman. She was a real work of passion that one, gossiping away secrets like they were a life line.

After work Ichika dressed up in one of her nicer dresses to meet up with the boy from earlier. She was wearing a simple plain blue dress with a white cardigan. She didn't buy any makeup in awhile so Ichika didn't wear any.

When she finally got there by walking she saw the boy waiting fearfully. She could tell he was trembling from the outside window. Ichika walked slowly to the table he was waiting at, and sat down.

"Do you know my mother ? She used to run a hair salon in the building that you were in … I got lost once, and couldn't find my way home." The ghoul quickly asks as soon as Ichika sits down. After that he scratches his head, and laughs a bit. Ichika thinks he's kinda stupid . "Did I ever tell you my name, no? Okay my name is Haruto Itō." He laughs again, and it doesn't improve Ichika's opinion on how smart he is.

"If your mother was Aoi Itō then she's dead," Ichika bluntly states, "She never came back one day when hunting. I assumed she was dead, and continued my life. That was three years ago." Ichika stops talking when she starts drinking her cup of coffee. It was probably for the best that she was somewhat thirsty, and stopped when she did.

The two talked the whole night about the old hag, for Ichika it was a night of remembrance of fond nights, for the other ghoul it was a night of what life could have been. It was a night of what if's.

They talked until they got kicked out of the café, and then they continued when they walked back to the salon. Ichika welcomed him in to her home by giving him some of her leftover blood wine. The wine was a gift from one of her ghoul customers as a thank you gift for everything she did for them.

"Are you sure you want to give me some of it ? Didn't you just say that it was a gift from somebody." Haruto bashfully tries to say no to the only kind of alcohol ghouls can drink. But when he looks at Ichika he finds her cup of wine halfway empty already.

"Come on you big pussy drink up!" Ichika happily says as she starts to drink more of the wine. Her face started to get a little flushed, and she was giggling like a maniac.

This was the point where Haruto just kinda gave up, and said to hell with it. He soon afterwards drank a huge amount of wine with Ichika. The both of them were drunken giggling messes. It didn't take long for them to start making out, and move upstairs to Ichika's room.

It made for a fun morning when a hangover Ichika woke up naked with a shirtless Haruto sleeping next to her on her small futon. She slowly looked underneath the sheets, and saw what she thought happened. Ichika started to laugh at herself, and woke Haruto up. Then he had a freak out, and saw that Ichika was laughing at him. Haruto did what anyone would do, he tickled Ichika till she couldn't breathe since she was laughing so hard.

Ichika and Haruto laid in bed for another hour laughing at each other, and making fun of their drunk selfs. But Ichika had to get up to work downstairs, some of her regulars came in the mornings for a touch up around every few months.

She grabbed a pan of water to water all the succulents, Francisco was huge and proud from all the years of careful keeping. He was very long and tall. The pokey spikes were the only thing keeping Ichika from hugging her best friend.

After watering all her plants Ichika walked over to the front door, and turned around the 'We are open' sign. Then she waited for her customers, it was a dull morning with few customers coming in. One of the part-timers showed up for a few hours.

"Hey Ichika! You look like you are glowing. Ooooh gurl did you do something last night ." Yui jokingly states, she was a spunky high schooler who would usually change her hair color every few weeks. She ended up getting a part-time job so the cost of a hairdo would be cheaper. "Oh my gawd you actually did something. Your face is super red, you're blushing like a tomato! Who was it! Give me all the details!" Yui yelled out in excitement, she was currently shaking Ichika side to side.

"Yui please stop, you're gonna drive me crazy hon." Sighed Ichika, Yui was easy excited so Ichika had to live with this sort of thing for awhile, she thought it was sad that she was used to it.

"I will if you tell me what happened." Yui smirkingly reply back, Ichika noticed the evil grin, and grew a look of despair in her eyes. She was doomed.

Ichika let out a sigh, and shook her head knowing that Yui wouldn't let this go. She gave into Yui's demand. "I just had too much to drink last night. And we-."

"WE! OH MY-,"Coughed Yui realizing that she was screaming out loud, and interrupted Ichika. "I never knew there was a _we_." Yui winked, and was wiggling her eyebrows. Ichika laughed and started to pat Yui's back to stop her from saying things that are embarrassing.

Soon after that conversation Yui left to go eat dinner with her family. The last customers stop coming in so Ichika closed up the salon early. And she got an unexpected guest.

"Is okay for me to come out now?" Haruto asked. He was waiting the whole day because he didn't want to ruin Ichika's customers impression of her. Ichika actually thought he jumped out the window earlier in the day.

"Yeah it's fine I'm just cleaning up the salon," Ichika noticed that Haruto was staring at the hair on the ground she was sweeping up into the trash. "Whatcha looking at hon?"

"Umm I'm kinda wondering about the whole hair salon thing. You know like the stuff my mother taught you." Haruto asked, and he looked like he was going to cry if Ichika said the wrong thing. He was fiddling with the hair next to his ear in a circular motion.

"Aah so you're wondering what she taught me right?" Ichika waited for some form of yes from Haruto, and she got a nod. "She was kinda like a mother to me. She took me in after I kept on coming back for soap. Then she taught me things like hair-cutting, making homemade soap, and doing a good hair dye. She was a huge mother-hen you know ?" Ichika rambled on to the listening ghoul. He was learning every word to heart.

After the heart to heart Haruto gave Ichika a rib-crushing hug, and left to go home. He said he'll come back in a few days. Ichika watched him leave in a daze, and wondering why she cares about somebody she just met.

Over the course of a month Haruto and Ichika started to drink more coffee together, after that Ichika would try to teach Haruto the things his mother taught her. In the later weeks Haruto started to live in the salon. This caused Yui to almost get a aneurysm. During this month Haruto would always suddenly leave randomly,

Yui was the first one to notice anything, she first noticed Ichika was a lot more sensitive to a lot of the soaps they sold, and she also noticed Ichika started to stare at her a lot in a hungry way. She started to give Ichika a lot more space, making Ichika feel like she had done something wrong.

On a Saturday during their lunch break, after receiving a giant lunch from Yui. Ichika asked "Why are you avoiding me, and giving me stuff."

"Umm Ichika are you pregnant?" Yui timidly replied. She looked very embarrassed to ask her employer that question, and hid her face in her hands

"I mean you aren't fat or anything, but like gurl you are so snappy, and you hate all the soaps you used to like. And you had sex a while ago with Haruto, I'm so sorry." After blurting out the words Yui said, she rushed out of the salon. Causing Ichika to look at her stomach in wonder.

After that scare Ichika started to notice that she was doing things she wouldn't normally do. She started to eat a lot more, and started to get a little more chubby. Also Yui was right that she didn't like most of the soap smells anymore. She actually didn't know if the human pregnancy tests would work for her, the old ghoul never told Ichika anything about pregnancy. So Ichika had to look for a ghoul doctor.

After telling Haruto she felt somewhat sick, they both looked for a doctor that could be somewhat ghoul safe. After a few days of looking Haruto found a small weak looking ghoul that did medicine for favors. Haruto gave the doctor a fresh corpse, and he got to work as soon as he got the cadaver.

As soon as the little doctor saw Ichika his eyes seem to lighten up in delight. "Ah young lady you are pregnant. Hmm for you I would guess to eat at least once every two weeks, maybe increase it when you feel hungry. Remember to comeback in for a check up in a couple of months." He stated in a professional tone while writing down something. When Ichika looked over she saw that his handwriting was so bad that she couldn't even read it.

Ichika felt dazed from the happy news, and somewhat scared since she had to eat so much. She was excited to tell Haruto and Yui the news.

Ichika when she exited the door from the room she was in during the examination saw Haruto, and ran up to him and jumped on him.

"I'm pregnant Haruto." She whispered in his ears while hugging him.

He hugged her back as a reflex, and tightened when she whispered in his ears.

"You are what?" He asked, his eyes wide and shocked.

"I'm pregnant." Ichika replied, she started to cry happily. Snot was coming out of her nose, every open spot in her face there was some sort of liquid coming out of it. Soon the both of them started to cry.

The first two months of knowing was sweet a innocent, the both of them tried buying everything related to babies books available. Haruto and Ichika continued to hunt with each other making it somewhat easy for the two of them to not get caught. Ichika also told everyone she knew the good news.

The third month wasn't as sweet, it was ruined by the death of Yui. She ended up committing murder of a fellow classmate, and gifting it to Ichika as a celebration gift. Soon after the murder she jumped off a cliff with a suicide note only saying _I love you_ written in blood repeatedly. The body of the classmate was in a box with many drawn on hearts.

Haruto ended up finding the body of Yui while looking for suicide bodys to eat instead of killing so many people. The three of them were well feed for a couple of weeks, but the thought of eating her only friend she had around her age disgusted Ichika to the point where Haruto had to shove it down her throat.

During the forth month the two of them decided that it was probably better to find areas where people wouldn't be missed. They had to travel pretty far so the murders of certain people wouldn't be linked to them.

Ichika started to mercy kill anyone who probably could die pretty soon, her body was always hungry. Her baby was basically a parasite, she always just felt drained. She wasn't looking forward to the next months ahead of her.

During the fifth month Ichika realized she probably wasn't going to work for a really long time, so she pushed herself to her job like when the old hag had just died. Ichika told all her customers that after this month she probably wasn't going to work for a few months because of her pregnancy. She received lots of worried looks from all of her customers telling her to stop pushing herself.

She also stopped hunting with Haruto, and tried to soak up in the café with him as long as she could. She felt like her pregnancy wasn't a perfect gift from a high being. She tried drowning this feeling with coffee. It didn't work out that well, and only made her think about her mistakes even more.

The sixth month Ichika had stopped working, but she tried to clean the salon the best as she could. She kept up with her plants, but it got to a point where she just was too exhausted to do anything. This was also the time where the two of them talked about babies names, Ichika picked out a few but she liked the names Haruto picked out. She liked the girl one the best.

The seventh month was torture for Ichika, it got to the point when Haruto was away doing who knows what that Ichika would start eating herself. She did this in her earlier ages never thinking she would do it later in her life. She stopped going outside, and slept for most of the days. Her parasite was slowly eating her alive, she now knew what the humans she had killed felt like.

In her eighth month Ichika wanted to cut out the baby inside of her, she couldn't even get out of her bed without throbbing pain. Haruto was gone more and more, Ichika felt alone that last month. She started writing letters to the baby inside of her to be somewhat sane.

 _Dear *blotched out from water *_

 _I hate you so much right now, your father is never here anymore. I am all alone, I am just a waste of space my talents cannot be used, and I will probably die from giving birth from how hungry you are. I hope you won't have such appetite when you are older it's hard enough to feed you right now. I hope you know I don't hate you. I love you, but you make it so hard to love you. Your father probably is screwing another woman, I don't think he loves me. He probably never did. He is trying his best at feeding us, but instead of like earlier were he would try his best of impressing me. Now he looks at me in a look of impatience, I hope I don't die so I can keep you away from that look. To be honest I don't think * water damage makes this un-readable* I wish Yui was here she would know what to do. I don't think Aoi ever had children, she was too old to have any his age. Why did I have to get drunk, why was I so fucking nice and courteous. You better get out of me soon, I'm having enough of this shit._

Most of Ichika's letters were of her rambling of her thoughts on paper, her child would probably never read this. She had grew doubts of Haruto over the few months when he would be gone more, and more. It isn't good to be by yourself for a long time since you have so much time to think.

Soon Ichika went into a long painful contractions, and began labor alone. After the first hour of labor Haruto arrived home out of breath. When he rushed upstairs and saw Ichika in labor he tried to keep her calm. During the whole labor Ichika screamed at Haruto about never being with her, or the hair salon wasn't open because of him. And lastly why did he fucking impregnate her.

Her labor was painful and long, Ichika was extremely tired and couldn't rest. After many hours of everything her baby was finally out. She was a big fat baby, she had gained her mother's hair color.

"Haruto it's our baby Rize. Isn't sh-." Ichika was interrupted by being stabbed in the stomach by Haruto. Coughing up blood she asks "Why Haruto?"

"My name isn't Haruto. It's Tsuneyoshi Washuu, I only did everything to get our child Rize. I killed the old woman because she was in my way, but when I saw you. I thought you would be good to be a mother for one of my future slaves. You are useless now, so you have no reason to live." When Tsuneyoshi said his last words to Ichika he swiftly killed her, leaving her to rot in the very place she loved.

When Tsuneyoshi left the salon he looked back quickly with a tear in his eye. In one of his hands he was carrying a bundle carrying Rize, and other was a very large cactus named Francisco.

Later in his life Tsuneyoshi Washuu and would be seen sometimes at a abandoned building crying. He would always denied it, but when asked the question in the comfort of his own home he would always look in direction of the Sunlit Garden.

 ** _A.N_**

 ** _Lol wasn't expecting that, me either I was looking up what Rize's last name was and I forgot she had a father. To be honest Tsuneyoshi is a asshole, I'm so happy I don't have to write him anymore. The whole reason he was gone and shit was because of the CCG, the little orphanage was supposed to be Amon but I had to change that since he's not that old. Lets tell you all the things that Tsuneyoshi did to Ichika! Because for some reason I decided to fuck her whole life up._**

 ** _1\. Kills her 'grandma'_**

 ** _1\. Kills Yui, he drove her to suicide or he killed her because she knew they were ghouls_**

 ** _3\. Maked her give up her business_**

 ** _4\. Always is gone_**

 ** _Man I hate this dude lol. I might have made him too OOC since I haven't gotten that far in the manga. Lol and I'm sorry guys I haven't been working on BAM I haven't gotten enough motivation to work on it. Maybe I'll do another chapter of Rize's POV that could be fun if you guys want that. Please review it really helps, and have a nice day!_**

 ** _Words:5296_**

 ** _-yatocat19_**


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